Parolee Who Raped Student Had Good Prison Record

LANSING (WWJ/AP) – A Michigan prisons spokesman says a parole board had no clear reason to reject a freedom request from a convict who later raped a college student and tried to burn down the house where she’d fled.

Authorities said a sheriff’s deputy shot 30-year-old Eric Ramsey of Mount Pleasant Thursday morning after the abduction and sexual assault of a Central Michigan University student.

Isabella County Sheriff Leo Mioduszewski said the young woman was abducted from campus in her own vehicle Wednesday night and taken to a home off campus where she was bound and raped.

Ramsey then put her back in the Ford Escape and pledged to kill her, but she jumped from the moving vehicle and ran to a home yelling for help. While the she was inside on the phone with a 911 operator, Ramsey poured gasoline on the home and set it ablaze, Mioduszewski said.

Prison records show Ramsey was paroled last summer after serving the minimum five years for assault with intent to do great bodily harm. The maximum sentence is 15 years, and inmates are eligible for parole review after their minimum sentences.

While trying to escape arrest later Thursday in a stolen sanitation vehicle, Ramsey found time to sign off via social media. Moments before his death, Ramsey wrote on his Facebook page that he was, “about to be shot, peace.”